a not admitting of the wound

Under the weight of Joan’s gaze, Vera stands still. Quiet. Expectant. It isn’t a demeanour entirely dissimilar to the one she slips into when she dons her uniform, thick and stiff, starched just the right amount; and so, perhaps because of this latent habit, she expects Joan to do the same, to revert to the familiar persona of the governor doling out instructions with the kind of gravity that brooks neither interference nor opposition. That, however, fails to be granted. The voice puncturing the silence hanging, dense and charged, between them, is not just hesitant but almost unnerved in its delivery. Vera lifts her chin, giving herself some semblance of a countenance, and awaits what feels like a sentence. What was it that she expected Joan would say or do before she even opened her mouth? A few words of parting between a superior and her subordinate? An accolade of sorts? Praise for a job well done? It’s only when Joan tells her that this - this! - will only happen in privacy that Vera realises nothing else would have suited this entirely new narrative. Whatever this is, whatever this has become, is now warped by a duality. 

“Yes…” The word ‘governor’ is swallowed. She cannot say it. She cannot say ‘Joan’ either. Neither of them fits. Teetering between two realities, both as sharp and real as each her, Vera feels the full force of such an assertion, its certainty contained within one single word (‘will’) enough to send her mind reeling. It drags her back to the wall, to the floor where her slippers still wait for her to pick them up. When did they come off? And how? Questions rooted in practicality are preferable even if they’ll remain unasked and unanswered. Like the rest of them, those attached to Joan’s implied intentions - that it will happen again. In privacy. “Of course,” she says as she moves with quick steps, bends over and pulls her slippers back on. It establishes some order to the situation. 

She doesn’t look at Joan, only casts a glance in her direction the way she does at work, and then she walks to the front door for the second time that evening. A turn of the key unlocks it. A push on the handle followed by a pull opens it. Vera stands beside it, her eyes lifting up to meet Joan’s. Appearances have been restored. The corridor is spotless. Whatever remains of what transpired between them now resides underneath their clothes and has carefully been tucked away in the folds of their memory. 

       Vera returns her feet to her slippers. She opens the front door.

       Now is for Joan to leave. Apart from the lingering scent of sweat and sex on her body, she could nearly pretend tonight hasn’t happened. They regard each other from the distance to which they are accustomed. They will not exchange kisses as lovers do; they will not promise each other more; they will not murmur something sweet--I love you, I’ll miss you, I can’t wait to see you again--as they part. She is aware of that. She is aware that she does not know how to say goodbye. She would like to touch Vera again.

       She moves toward the open door, her freedom on the other side of the frame. Their distance remains: their safe, comfortable distance that has always marked their places, subordinate and superior, deputy and governor. But now, Joan feels, it is not a distance, intangible; it is a cord between the two of them, and each of them leaning against its opposite ends, drawing it taut, keeping apart when the tension would spring their bodies together if it could, each doomed to feel every twitch and hitch and gasp of the other as they strain against its power.

       She would like to touch Vera again. Her hands curl into fists, fingertips hard in her palms, before she releases them.

       She touches the button at the center of her shirt, between her breasts. She is reminding herself that these buttons are done up again, that she is covered and protected; all it does is return the image of Vera’s mouth on her nipple, framed by the stuffed-down black cup of her bra, her nose pressed into soft flesh. Her nostrils flare. She cannot tolerate this. Neither the strain on the cord as she leans away nor the gravity demanding she fall back into Vera.

The velvet of Joan’s kiss caresses Vera’s lips long enough to uncurl something inside of her and soothe it, stroking it into compliance, submission, acceptance but does nothing to numb the sting of the words rolling off the same tongue she can still feel and taste on her own. Vera’s gaze drops. To the punished sheet of paper now turned over to contemplate its wrong doings. To Joan’s hands so soft and delicate when they deliver the fiercest of blows. To Joan’s lap.

In spite of everything, she wants to climb atop it. Crawl if that’s what it’ll take. She wants to beg for forgiveness with the tender entreatment of her fingers tugging at her tie. There are moments, rare and precious and treasured, when Joan lets her untie the knot, slip a few shirt buttons into their corresponding holes, touch the line of her collarbone. And though Vera never fully looks at her, she can feel the smile playing on her lips, small but there. The sort of smile one wears when indulging a child. Her eyes lift slowly. They find Joan’s and don’t let go. Don’t waver.

“Are you disappointed?" 

Now, with this. Before, during the riot. Vera has failed. This, the report, was her attempt at regaining her footing but she’s slipped again and she’s struggling in the ever growing puddle of her shortcomings.

        If Joan closes her eyes, CCTV footage plays: Vera’s upturned face with a needle at her neck. She is familiar with that look of desperation.

        Her father was never fully licensed to hunt, but he would take Joan out to do it anyway on occasion, driving out from the suburbs at night so that they would be on the ground at dawn. It was important to him that she gain exposure to these things: timing, precision, stealth; to lying in wait like a spider in its web. To making the choice to kill, especially a wounded thing, most likely to provoke a young girl’s sympathy. Cutting a throat, smashing a skull, skinning something. “Put your hands in it, Joan,” his voice would rumble from behind her. He always stank of alcohol on those trips. She never willingly gutted an animal and sometimes doing it would make her panic and then she had disappointed him, which was worse, worse than the fear, worse than the skin, worse than the blood and the viscera touching her.

        That look on the cameras is the look of a hunted animal, bleeding but still conscious; the look of something that knows it is about to die. She knows what her father would tell her. He is urging her on even now. Cut it, Joan. She can smell his breath, tobacco and liquor and a late night’s travel. You know what to do. She can remember her hand with the knife and what it felt like to have the tip press through fur and the thick skin of an animal to dig into its flesh, how there was resistance, then a give. An upward cut toward the throat would open the abdominal wall and yield the coiled insides. By the time she was a teenager, he didn’t have to tell her what to do anymore, and she no longer felt fear, only a stony remoteness. Their hunting trips petered out. She had learned all she could from them.

Everything turns cold. The absence, sudden and heedless, of Joan’s lips is supplanted by hailstones of words pelting Vera until she is moving, detaching herself from the warmth and the scent and the safety of Joan’s body. Without a word, the order is followed as dutifully and as effectively as ever. Vera doesn’t question nor does she protest in spite of the need firmly nestled in her belly. Getting dressed seems like an otherworldly task, a concept familiar enough to register and guide her to collect her clothes yet foreign in its nature and execution. As though it doesn’t belong there and then. There, on the spot Joan occupies; and then, then after…

Her underwear is missing. Lingering increases her self awareness in generous increments so Vera, without sparing Joan a glance, retreats to the bedroom. Mum’s. The nearest one. It’s cold. She is cold. Alone. Washed up ashore whilst the tide, divesting itself of the burden of holding her, retreats, its waves like whispers of promises and wonders fathoms below no longer gently lapping at her. Vera gets dressed and fixes her hair quickly, staring blankly, at mum’s room now empty of shouts and pain. Even death has gone, leaving nothing in its wake but a bare mattress and a faint whiff of bleach. When Vera takes a few steps to reach the threshold, the fabric of her trousers rubs against the skin between her legs. It is still tender, still wet and sticky. 

Upon reaching the corridor, she hesitates, casts her gaze downward to grant Joan privacy or time - or perhaps a moment to ease into this. Into this after, this new normalcy. The floor looks like it always has but she’s looking at it intently all the same, scouring its expanse for the lost remnants of what had felt and sounded and tasted and smelt like happiness for so brief a time. Eventually, Vera looks up. Her face is arranged, her hands neatly clasped in front of her. Joan, she knows, would be loath to face her any other way.

        Vera does not know what to do. That much is evident. As ever, she looks to Joan.

        The presence of fabric against her skin is a nagging itch. Joan is accustomed to feeling protected by her clothes, secure against infection, but now feels as though she has roughly dressed an open wound--her whole body--and the raw nerves are squalling against the harsh treatment. Everything between her legs is hot and swollen, no longer totally aroused, but sensitive and alive. She would have preferred to go numb.

        She is not a woman who lingers to confront a lover. She does not stay for pillow talk; she does not sleep over until the next morning. She departs after the engagement with no more exchange of words than is necessary. Precision in all things, even in sex. But this has not been a precise evening. Her actions have not been controlled. They are embarrassing. They are not merely mistakes. They are choices. Failures. Humiliating failures. She stares back at Vera. She feels the presence of her father behind her.

        “This...” She swallows. “Cannot be brought to Wentworth. Do you understand?” No giggles or smiles or coy grabs in the halls. No looks during staff meetings. Nothing. Repercussions of her failure. Her eyes rove Vera. The other woman is still totally disheveled, her hair a frizzy mess around her flushed face, her lips swollen and eyes glittering with uncertainty and desire. “It will only...” She breathes in shakily. It will only happen this once. We will never discuss it again. If you threaten me, Vera, I will take any action necessary. You do not know who you are dealing with.

Joan's nostrils flared. She took a breath of Vera.

At work, anonymized by the uniform and by the demands of professionalism, dress code, the rigidity of working as a woman in Corrections, Vera did not wear perfume. Joan would venture a guess that she rarely wore perfume outside of Wentworth, either; she was not the kind of person who declared herself. She has never seen Vera on an ordinary day: stepping in and out of stores, at a sidewalk table at a cafe, visiting a friend, going to a bar or a club (Vera? Really?). But she could picture those occasions, a woman no one noticed, accustomed to eyes sliding over her as though she were wallpaper. Until recently it was the same at Wentworth. No more distinguished, despite her title, than another teal-painted cement block.

Except to Joan. She knew this scent. She was attuned to smell. In a dark room she could have closed her eyes and identified Vera by it. She always smelled clean. Her uniform was always tidy and it was always crisply laundered (the same could not be said for certain other officers, who reeked of sweat and alcohol); her hair was always well-tended, although Joan was sure it was not pampered. Generic shampoo, the cheapest thing on the shelf. She pictured Vera shopping for it, watched the imaginary Vera's hand hover timidly over the expensive brand, the one that promised luxury and curls like silk, before dropping to the one on sale, consoling herself by the artificial fragrance. Joan did not know her exact routine but she was also sure she moisturized her skin. That, too, generic and unlovely. Not an extra penny spent on tending a body she did not deem worthy.

The moisturizer, and under that, her skin itself. There was no circumventing the animal reality of a human body. With Vera, she did not want to. She lowered her head into the curve of Vera's neck and inhaled again. She touched her. Her hands slid up Vera's back and pressed her close. She swept her nose up her neck and felt it tickled by the soft hairs just behind her ear, the tender pink shape of which she bit for Vera's audacious assumption of authority. There were many such fragile places on her deputy's body that were sensitive and touching them made blood spring up hot under the skin, brought a red flush, a thundering pulse, made Vera's eyes pinch closed and her lips part in that way that suggested half pleasure, half fright, stunned at her own responsiveness.

Joan opened her eyes and glanced over Vera's shoulder at her office door. It was shut and so were the blinds. The officers rostered for the overnight shift would be nowhere near them now. Sulking over coffee or tea in the break room, patrolling empty corridors, or monitoring security cameras, eyes burning from the screens. Still. Care and delicacy. Control. Detachment. Their cheeks brushed. She felt Vera sigh into her. During the day, the newly-cowed prisoners spat "Vinegar Tits" at her back and ducked their heads under her stony eyes, but at night Vera was as soft as she'd ever been, and she was Joan's.